The latest news on avoiding dairy products if you are lactose intolerant, have milk allergies, are a vegan, or want to keep kosher.

The Lactose Intolerance Clearinghouse Has Moved.

My old website can be found at www.stevecarper.com/li I am no longer updating the site, so there will be dead links. The static information provided by me is still sound.

For quick offline reference, you can purchase Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog as an ebook on Smashwords.com or Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com or a whole lot of other places that Smashwords is suppose to distribute the book to. Almost 100,000 words on LI, allergies, milk products, milk-free products, and the genetics of intolerance, along with large helpings of the weirdness that is the Net.

I suffer the universal malady of spam and adbots, so I moderate comments here. That may mean you'll see a long lag before I remember to check the site and approve them. Despite the gap, you'll always get your say. I read every single one, and every legitimate one gets posted.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A kosher cheeseburger is a mythical beast, almost perfectly oxymoronic. Observing Jews cannot have milk with meat. A cheeseburger is the epitome of the code's violation.

Ingenious humans know that there is an answer for every problem. Just put quotes around "meat" or "cheese" and voilà! A substitute for the real thing that satisfies all technicalities.

Except, perhaps, for the one of taste. Real cheese on meatless patties won't work for vegans or the dairy allergic, and for many of the rest of us is mostly a waste of real cheese.

Soy cheese on top of real beef is also a nonstarter for many. The flavors don't meld together.

Unless, of course, you happen to be a New York chef with the proper industrial-strength equipment to grab flavor by its chemical feet and dangle it slowly over a fire.

That's the story of Effie Nagar, owner of Talia’s Steakhouse on New York's Upper West Side, who experimented with soy cheese to the point where he is now advertising New York's first kosher cheeseburger. (I have my doubts that no one's thought of this before, but puffery in the restaurant business goes back before time and is even legal.)

Peri Grabin Leong wrote about Nagar in the NY Blueprint, the urban Jewish event guide.

After many attempts to melt the cheese, they found the right temperature in a 1950 degree (F) broiler. A broiler so hot it can cook a steak in minutes. After taking my order (Effie recommended mozzarella over American cheese) Effie took me into the kitchen and offered me a taste of the soy cheese. I overcame my natural fear of fake cheese to find that I was right... it doesn’t taste like cheese. As the chef placed my burger back in the broiler I watched the cheese melt over it (yes, very impressive for soy). He placed it on a toasted bun topped with lettuce, tomato, red onion and pickles and I walked my burger back to my table.

Like myself, Effie, had never had a cheeseburger before, so he brought some non-Jewish friends to try out his new burger and they loved it. He told me that he’s had some lactose intolerant, non-kosher, customers order the burger. “It’s interesting for them too. It’s the only place they can have [a cheeseburger]. Show me another place [in Manhattan]” he said “I don’t know of one."

Ingenuity like this shouldn't be left to mere restaurant-owning chefs. Every one of us who have to avoid some food in our diets should be looking at experimental variations. Why deprive ourselves? Find the best foods for your personal tastes and indulge.

About Me

I'm lactose intolerant. I wrote the book on the subject. Literally. Milk Is Not for Every Body: Living with Lactose Intolerance is its name.
I've researched everything on the subject of lactose intolerance for 30 years. I know just about everything about living without dairy products. That means I've been able to help people with dairy protein allergies, vegans, those who want to keep kosher, and others who want to reduce, limit, or eliminate dairy from the diet.
I keep an eye out for information that might be useful. You can see a lot of it at my website, Steve Carper's Lactose Intolerance Clearinghouse (www.stevecarper.com/li). The Milk Free Bookstore and the Product Clearinghouse sections have something for everybody. But the site got too big to update regularly and too cluttered to find information easily.
That's why I started this blog. It really does cover the planet for lactose- and dairy-related items. I think I have the only blog in the world that does this.
So please check it out regularly. Send me items you think may be of interest. Ask me questions: I answer every one, either here or by email. stevecarper@cs.com